


Topsider

by J_Nerd



Series: Tales of the Underground [2]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Violence, F/F, Guns, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Experimentation, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, Trauma, mention of suicide, mob related violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Nerd/pseuds/J_Nerd
Summary: After thirty-three years of safety under the streets of New York, the Underground is no more. The people are gone. Its protectors presumed dead. The Norths have finally come, razing Gorin's kingdom to rubble and taking back what was stolen more than three decades earlier.Fearing Holtzmann dead alongside her mother and aunt, Erin races to find her lover only for the mystery surrounding Holtzmann's origins and Gorin's dealings with the Norths to deepen into treacherous waters. It's often asked what a person is willing to do to save someone they love. The better question is: what are they willing to become in the process?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Okay my lovelies, here we go. We're embarking on an entirely new adventure, treading into uncharted waters. I wanted to first thank you all for your love and support of Tunnel Rats. It's because of you all I'm actually writing this sequel. 
> 
> But while I'm super excited to begin, I need to level with you all. This story is going to be heavy. We're not going to get a lot of fluff for a while, and the story content will get dark very quickly. Because of that, and because I know how I get while writing dark subject matter, this story will not be as long as TR. I cannot devote 40+ chapters to something dark. Tried that with Ecto-high and wrote myself into a dangerous, self-destructive headspace. I'm aiming for 15 solid chapters with a satisfying resolution. I might write more, I'm not sure. I'm just focused on finishing while giving you all quality content to read.
> 
> So yeah, this will be shorter and darker, but I hope you give it a chance. I mean...you gotta see how it ends ;) As always, give feedback if you can. It's like emotional currency for us writers. The more we have the easier it is for us to devote time and effort into creating content for you all. Please and thank you.

The Main Hall stretched like an arrow into the darkness, desolate and barren like a corpse with its guts scooped out, leaving brittle bones behind in the form of deserted shelters.  

Erin and Rowan faced one another, two chess pieces balancing on a knife’s edge. Erin knew he thought himself the cat and she the mouse. Maybe today that was the case. Maybe she was finally reaching the end of the rope she’d hung herself with months ago. 

All she knew for certain was that it didn’t matter anymore.

“You took something from me!” Rowan shouted.

“I took back what was mine,” Erin snarled savagely in response, standing fierce and tall.

Crawling through the shadows ten yards away, Holtzmann saw the gun in Rowan’s hand raise and level, the man on the other end staring grimly down the barrel, favoring the wound in his right side.

_Erin, don’t! He’s got a gun!_

The DA jumped and half-spun, eyes wide and wild. Even in the darkness, they locked on Holtzmann’s rapidly approaching form before Goliath lashed out and took the smaller woman off her feet in a bear hug, holding her back like a fish struggling at the end of a line.

No, she wasn’t supposed to be here!

Twisting around, Erin saw Rowan’s attention flag—eyes drawn to the sound of shouting— and played the only card at her disposal by reaching into her waistband for Patty’s 45. 

Two shots rang out. Two muzzle flashes burst to life like lightning strikes. Holtzmann screamed and thrashed in Goliath’s arms, terror making her world slow. In abject horror she watched as Erin fell to earth, flesh hitting concrete with a sickening thud. She didn’t rise, body still as Rowan grimly moved to stand over her, unloading one more round at close range.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry it's taken me this long to update. I swear I haven't forgotten about this story it just...life has taken a pretty nasty turn and writing has been hard. I'll explain at the end of the chapter, but for now here's the official kickoff to Topsider. Enjoy.

Bloody hands scrambled in the rubble, a frustrated cry echoing into the night when fabric snagged on twisted re-bar, stretching and tearing. Hand over hand, Erin dragged herself out of the wreckage of the lift cage, coughing dust from her lungs and tasting blood on her tongue.

The cage had been going too fast, it’s Underground counterbalance malfunctioning half-way up the shaft. Braced at the bottom of the lift, Erin was helpless to stop her trajectory, yellow and orange sparks igniting in the darkness like falling stars. Without a way to control her speed, the cage had turned into a hollow battery ram with her trapped inside for a terrifying ride and the sudden stop of Topside impact.

Metal squealed.

Concrete fractured.

Earth and sky traded places in a cacophonous pirouette until there was only darkness and a chilling kind of warmth spreading across Erin’s face when her limp body finally settled beneath a bed of rubble.

She didn’t know how long she’d laid under the debris, pinned and bleeding, until consciousness came roaring back in a series of viscerally pigmented flashes, forcing Erin’s dust-choked lungs to contract violently and expel the foreign matter. Body jerking involuntarily as her eyes flew open, Erin struggled to comprehend what had happened until she began to register where she was, what was on top of her, and how it had gotten there.

That was when true fear set in.

For a terrifying moment, Erin believed she’d never be free －trapped to suffocate just shy of the surface like a drowning victim attempting to fight their way through ice－until the rubble lost its grip and fell away in chunks. It was then she twisted free with a final, gut-wrenching cry, sliding out of the hole she’d created like a perverse imitation of embryonic birth.

Curled on her side like a question mark, she fought to rediscover her bearings. So much hurt. Inside and out. She was in agony but for once her body didn’t shut down and crumble. Quite the opposite. Erin was struggling into unstable feet with a sob, twisting in place, understanding making a noxious nest in her bowels.

She was Topside.

Jillian wasn’t with her.

She’d just lost everything.

“Fuck!” she shouted into the empty darkness, hands in her hair and tears on her cheeks. “ _ _Fuck!__ ” Her next string of expletives weren’t as clear, rolling off her tongue like a toxin.

Panic was a light word. Terror failed to fully grasp the severity of the emotions filling her like carbonation, giving her heart hummingbird’s wings. She didn’t know what to do. Where to turn. Who to turn to. Life had become a discombobulated streak of noise and color, too chaotic and cacophonous for Erin to handle.

In the span of an evening, she’d just lost everything she ever loved.

“Why did you do this!?” Erin screamed at everyone and no one. “I would have stayed with you! I wanted to stay with you!  _ _Why am I here?!__ ” 

Her heart might have been breaking but somewhere in the maelstrom of her mind she knew she had to act. Had to try. Had to fight. Jillian was still down there. She needed her. Erin would get back Underground if it took stealing a backhoe and digging her way there, but thankfully the more pragmatic section of her brain was still functioning.    

Stumbling into the bone-chilling night air, Erin climbed to the top of the embankment near the tunnel mouth and looked around, bracing against the wintry drizzle soaking her hair and freezing her skin. Central Park was a massive chunk of land. Even she had to admit she didn’t know all its nooks and crannies, all its secret places, but a road was a road and it would lead her out through one entrance or another.

Luckily, a road wasn’t hard to find or follow, and when she emerged back into the embrace of her magnificently brutal city Erin ran for the closest pay phone. The people she passed, stumbled into, twisted away from on the street were nothing more than mannequins at this point, faces lost to the distortion of Erin’s need to find help and find it now.

Her collision with a phone booth a handful of blocks later was like washing up on shore after being lost at sea. Squeezing into the grimy box with its scratched and foggy plexiglass sides and graffiti accents, she missed her first grab for the receiver, the phone dropping to swing by her knees before she snatched it up and rammed her coins into the slot. Her fingers stung punching in the numbers, the dial tone buzzing in her ears.

“Please, please, please, plea－”

Connection.

“It’s two in the fucking morning,” a voice growled on the other line. “What do you ne－”

“Patty!” Erin shouted, gripping the bottom of the receiver and pressing her back against the wall behind her, struggling to stay standing. “Patty, you have to help me.”

“Erin?” came the groggy reply, slurred with post-sleep. “Baby, what’s going on?”  

“I didn’t know who else to call. I’m sorry, Patty.” Her breath was hitching, tears not far off, fanned by her hyperventilation. “Everything happened so fast.”

“You’re scaring me, girl. What’s happened?”

“The Norths!” she hissed through clenched teeth, bending at the waist. Out in the darkness, Erin watched every shadow, waiting for one to materialize into a North solider. Into an entity hellbent of snuffing out her life. Her voice dropped to a harsh whisper, fear making her shiver. “They found us. They found the Underground. I don’t know how but they stormed it. They were shooting…e-everyone.

Images flashed behind Erin’s closed eyes, horrific scenes painted in blood and smoke. People screaming. People dying. A woman torn to pieces by automatic rifle fire, dead eyes locked on Erin as if she somehow had the power to save her.

“Gorin’s－Gorin’s dead,” Erin eeked out, feeling her gorge rise and forcing the bile back down. A man passed the phone booth, head ducked against the rain. Erin felt her pulse beating away in her neck as wild eyes followed him. “Abby too. Patty, they were killing people－”

“Erin－”

“Right in front of me,” she hiccuped, grinding her forehead against the plexiglass door as if she could push the memories out. “I couldn’t stop them. I couldn’t run. None of us could. That just kept coming－”

“Erin, where are－”

“I couldn’t stop them, Patty! No one mattered! They were killing everyone. Jill－ she…she sent me－”

“ _ _Erin__!” Patty shouted, already on her feet and grabbing her coat. “ _ _Where the fuck are you?!__ ”

“I don’t know,” she finally sobbed, hand over her mouth as she wedged herself into the furthest corner of the phone booth, sliding to the floor. “Jill got me out. She…she got me into a lift but it crashed and I ran here.”

“Look around. Find a sign. Come on, Gilbert. You can’t fold now.”

Leaning back until her head thumped against the plexiglass, Erin squeezed her eyes shut. “I ran, Patty. I ran like a coward.”

“No, you ran like a smart motherfucker. There ain’t shit you can do when faced with odds like that. Now, where are you, Erin?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look around, baby. Get your bearings. Tell me where you are, or I can’t help you.”

Mustering up the courage to move, Erin pulled herself up and leaned out of the booth, squinting through tears that turned every streetlight into a smudgy halo.  

 “64th street. I think I’m near 5th Avenue.”

“Good girl! Stay put. You hear me? Do not move from where you are. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

The line went dead, stranding Erin once again in darkness and rain. Letting the beeping receiver drop to swing listlessly on its small tether, she drew her knees to her chest and huddled at the bottom of the phone booth, eyes open but unseeing as the events played over and over again in the space between reality and memory.

Gunfire. Smoke. Screaming. Jill’s anguished cries as she pounded at the security door. Blood…the same sticky kind covering Erin’s front. The same kind spreading across Holtz’s torso.

 _ _I love you.__  It came back to her over and over like a dark chime. Jillian had said goodbye and Erin let her go.

The sudden thud of something striking the phone booth shook Erin out of her dark spiral so hard she nearly screaming out of reflex. Head on a swivel, she whipped around and immediately shrank away from the man squinting at her through the dirty plexiglass.

“What you doing in there, sweetheart?” he asked, words slurred and stance uneven, hinting at heavy inebriation or worse. Leaning clumsily in place, he offered a grin more leering than endearing. “Ain’t a good place to sleep.”

Erin didn’t answer. Instead, her right leg shot out and wedged itself against the folding door, ensuring the stranger couldn’t push his way in.

“Aww don’t be like that,” he pouted. “Come out. I’ll be your boyfriend tonight.”

When Erin didn’t remove her foot or move from her petrified state on the floor, the drunk began to chafe at her lack of reaction, becoming belligerent.

“I’m offering you help, you stupid bitch.”

Pulse in her neck, Erin scooted low and put her back against the plexiglass wall, using the strength in her legs to keep the door shut. How her luck could be this awful in one day didn’t escape her notice, but for the moment she occupied herself in simply hanging on until Patty showed, praying the drunk would tired of his efforts and simply wander off.

That wasn’t the case.

“Open the goddamn door you fucking slut!” he raged pawing clumsily at the handle and using his shoulder to press into the folding crease.  Leverage against leverage, the two battled in the cold darkness, the dunk succeeding in wedging his fingers into a small crack before a shout snagged his attention.     

“Ay! The fuck you think you’re doing?” Patty thundered, shoving the man away. Anticipation and years of training kicking into high gear, Patty’s hand drifted towards her side, but the man wasn’t a mercenary or a thug. He wasn’t even an upright citizen at this point, the amount of booze in his system making him stumble a handful of steps before he spun around with even less grace.

“Fuck’s your problem?”

“Beat it, asshole. Ain’t nothing for you here.”

“Who the fuck are you telling me what to do?” he slurred, face ugly and twisted. “Teach you some manners you dark sk－”

Before he could finish his sentence, Patty’s thick fingers snagged his lower jaw and slammed him into the phone booth, smashing his nose and cheek into the unyielding plastic. From Erin’s point of view, he looked like a germ sample under a microscope.  

“Boy, I will fuck you up so fast if you finish what you were about to say,” Patty threatened darkly, lifting the edges of her shirt to reveal the perforated handle of the 45 that never left her hip. “I’ll put a bullet between your eyes before your ass cheeks clench, ya feel me? Piss off.” She let him go with a hard shove, posture set like a statue.

 Rubbing his sore face, the drunk pulled back, able-bodied enough to sense when he was outgunned…literally. “Jesus, alright. Calm down, okay?” he said, lifting his hands and slowly backing away. “I’m just messing with yah, man. That’s all. Didn’t mean shit by it.”

Patty didn’t move until the man turned and stumbled back the way he’d come. “Hate this part of town,” she muttered under her breath before crouching in front of the door to show Erin the coast was clear. “He’s gone, baby. You’re safe.”

Peeling herself off the floor and sliding into the night, Erin forewent any sort of formality and threw her arms around her tall friend, trying and failing to fight the shivers making it hard for her to stand.

“Yo, it’s okay, baby. You’re okay. Let me get a look at you.” Patty gently pushed Erin back, eyes taking in every inch of abuse the woman had suffered during the collapse of her world. “Fucking-A, babydoll, you need a hospital.”

That was the last thing Erin wanted right now, and her vehement head shake said it all.

“You’re covered in blood.”

“It’s not mine,” Erin said, voice trembling as her arms encircled her middle.

“Yeah, honey, some of it is.”

“I have to go back, Patty. Jill’s still down there. She’s hurt. They shot her…I can’t…I can’t lose her…” Voice breaking, Erin began backing away, hoping deflating when Patty didn’t follow.

“Girl, you need to explain to me exactly what happened.”

“I told you. The Norths found the Underground.”

“I got that, and if that’s the case, we need to get the fucking police involved. Us going down there isn’t gonna do anything but get us killed.”

“I’m not leaving Jill to bleed to death!”

“We aren’t vigilantes, Erin! Or special Ops. If people are getting shot and killed we need to report it now and get the police involved. Maybe even the FBI, but an ex-cop and a District Attorney don’t need to be attempting a rescue mission when the mob is involved.”

 “You know why we can’t call anyone, Patty. That’s why I called you,” Erin tried to reason, putting every ounce of need into her words. “What do you think will happen if the cops get involved while Jillian is still down there? What if they see her? What’s going to happen then?”

“Yeah and whats gonna happen to the normal people getting mowed down if we keep this quiet, boo? I get your girl is in the crosshairs, but from what you’ve told me, there are normal humans living down there too. One life can’t outweigh all the rest.”

Erin felt Patty’s words hit her directly in the chest. She knew the truth behind them. Hell, she lived that truth on the daily, but while Patty’s life had been centered around the needs of the many, Erin’s world revolved around the needs of the few. And right now, those few involved only one person.

“There’s no one left, Patty,” she whispered, eyes so wide and haunted the PI could see the whites in them.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I saw the Main Hall. They didn’t leave anyone alive.” Looking up, Erin took another two agonizing steps away from her friend, angling herself towards Central Park. Terrified and traumatized through she was, her mind had been made up the second she’d crawled from the lift “I need your help, Patty, but I won’t wait for you. Jill needs me. I won’t leave her down there with those men. I’m all she has left.”

 Before Patty could form a response, Erin turned and ran back the way she’d come, disappearing into the night and successfully striking a chord of deja vu in the PI. Wasn’t this situation similar to how they’d met almost a year ago?.

“Dear God, how is it I keep having to chase after this skinny white woman?” Patty growled but took chase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go. Lots of fun to be had now, but again, I apologize for the delay in updating. For those who might follow me on Tumblr, I recently had emergency surgery. Turns out it really sucks when your appendix attempts to burst inside of you. Good news, I'm on the mends. Bad news, I was forced to have the surgery without insurance. The bills have already started coming in and I'm pretty much devastated at this point. I've got a Go Fund Me going to help soften the blow, but even that can only help so much. 
> 
> So for now I'm trying to keep my head above water and continue my work. I'll try to be more prompt with updates, just bear with me. 
> 
> As always, if you enjoyed the read let me know.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry this update is so long coming. Between working on two original projects and life issues it's been hard to find the time to come back to my poor broken babies. I hope there are still readers afoot waiting to see what happens.

God, this was probably the stupidest thing Patty had ever done. How was it less than a week ago she was enjoying drinking with her old man, catching up and eating her weight in her mother’s excellent cooking only to now be chasing after a skinny white girl covered in blood into a goddamn park where people were getting shot?

Oh and all she had on hand was her 45.

Oh and apparently this mayhem was taking place _underground_ , well out of sight and reach of normal backup.

Yep, this was by far the stupidest thing she’d ever done, bar none.

Patty didn’t have the slightest clue what to expect other than absolute carnage and the very real possibility she was going to get shot at tonight. Following Erin into the polluted half-darkness of Central Park, every instinct screamed, “this is fucking stupid!” as she stumbled off the beaten path after her friend.

The cold didn’t appear to matter to either of them as they hurried through the underbrush, Erin leading the way like a jack rabbit running from a wolf. Patty had to hiss at her multiple times to slow down－she was a big woman and not meant for nimble jaunts through the forest－but it was like snapping at a toddler. Granted, the PI couldn’t blame her, but if only one of them could think clearly tonight, Patty was damn well going to make sure they at least lived to see sunrise.

That hope held firm until they crested a gentle hill more bump than incline and came upon the mouth of a tunnel plucked straight out hell. It was like a tractor-trailer-sized worm protruding from the soil, mouth yawning open to swallow them whole. The only way to stop Erin from bulldozing in was by grabbing her arm partway down the embankment and pull her back.

“We are not going into that,” Patty pointed with her gun, breath billowing around her head like an earth-bound cloud. Okay, now she was feeling the cold.

“That’s the entrance,” Erin said by way of an answer as if this was common knowledge.

“No, that’s a sure fire way we wind up floating in the East River. What the fuck, Erin? People don’t go into dark tunnels, especially at night! How do you even know this is the right one?”

“You see why it’s the perfect cover then,” Erin retorted, twisting away and approaching without a hint of fear. It was almost like she’d done this a hundred times before, and that’s when it hit Patty like a brick to the throat. Erin had. She’d been living Underground for a while now. It all made sense, but then something darker crawled into her brain, taking the breath from her lungs.

“Gorin’s Holtzmann’s mother, isn’t she?” The statement froze the DA mid-stride, destroying any lie she might have dreamed up in the beat between seconds. Sensing she’d hit a nerve, Patty continued with her diabolical train of thought. “This whole time, all that investigating you had me do, all that damn digging, it was because she’s the mother of the chick you’ve been seeing.”

“Was,” Erin clarified quietly, using past tense because Gorin was dead. Her fight to keep her lower lip from quivery was only marginally successful.

“Oh my god,” Patty stood to her full height, finally getting it. How it had taken her this long spoke volumes about the rusting of her detective senses. “This whole time you’ve been sleeping with the daughter of a made woman. You got me involved looking into the identity of a made __woman__.”

“Gorin was never part of the Norths,” Erin snapped, insulted at the accusation.

“She was employed by them, Erin!”

“And she ran from them!” Erin shouted, making Patty wince at the sudden volume. “She ran with Abby and started the Underground for people like her. To get away from the mob. To be safe! And now those same men have come into Gorin’s home, __into my sanctuary__ , and taken everything! I’ve not been sleeping the daughter of a made woman, Patty. I’ve been helping a hidden society thrive while people like you make petty judgments Topside!”

It was wrong of her to snap like that, Erin knew, and Patty knew were the sudden burst of temper was coming from, but it didn’t stop the PI’s own flare of temper from rearing its ugly head.

“I warned you to keep me out of shit like this. I __fucking__  warned you!”

“Then leave,” Erin seethed, stomping to the tunnel mouth and disappearing into the shadows. Half a second later, Patty heard what sounded like a metal gate being pulled aside, hinges squealing in the biting January air.

“The fuck, the fuck, __the fuck__!?” Patty snarled, turning in a tight circle, unsure what to do. She could leave. Nothing was stopping her. The park was a big place. All she had to do was pick a direction and walk. But like it or not, Erin was her friend. She may have lied, kept things from her, coerced her into digging up information that could have gotten them both killed, but at the end of the day, Patty still liked the DA.

You could like someone and still want to strangle the life out of them, right?

“I hate this. I really, _really_ hate this,” she muttered, clicking the safety off her gun and pulling a flashlight from her back pocket.

One click of the switch illuminated the whole tunnel, Erin included. She turned and squinted at Patty through the glare of the beam, raising a hand to shield her eyes. If she was surprised to see her, however, it didn’t show.

“If we’re doing this, we’re doing it _my way_ , got it?” Patty whispered harshly, pointing at the ground. “You don’t run off ahead. You don’t leave my line of sight. You keep quiet and yourun or hide if I tell you to _ _.__  Clear?” 

Erin chafed at the prospects of moving at a pace that wasn’t her own blistering scramble, but with no other alternatives an no one else to turn to, she agreed with a tight nod.

“Thank fuck. Now show me where to go and then stay behind me.”

The first two hundred yards or so were traversed quietly, only the scrape of their footsteps proceeding them. Patty had to wonder who authorized the tunnel's construction on account of its size. It was a bit shocking being able to stand fully upright without hitting her head, and she was a tall woman on a good day.

“You’ve been sneaking in here through this thing the whole time?” Patty frowned up at the convex ceiling. What kind of urban Narnia bullshit was her friend involved in?

“No one uses Topside entrances like these. Too risky. We come and go through passages scattered all over the city.”

“We? You part of these people now?”

Was she really privy to answer that? Painting herself as an Undergrounder now when in reality she stood with one foot Topside and the other Underground. Erin didn’t know for sure what she was, but what she did know was that her home had been violated. Her sanctuary was gone. Her safety net cut loose, and she was reeling.

Instead of answering, Erin led Patty to the break in the tunnel wall Goliath usually used to escort her lower but froze mid-way through the passage when the PI’s beam caught the white soles of sneakers surrounded by an oily, rusty puddle on the ground.

“Fuck,” Patty hissed through her teeth, approaching the body with cautious care. She didn’t recognize the young man, but Erin did, stomach bile scorching the back of her throat.

 _If they catch Lucas they will kill him _,__  Gorin’s voice drifted back to her, reaching down her throat and taking her heart in its hands. Unbidden, Erin’s vision swam, the buzzing in her ears matching the static filling her consciousness. _His blood will be on your hands. Are you prepared to face that?_

So this was how the Norths found them.

Lucas never stood a chance judging by the hole blown in the back of his head. He died where he’d fallen, executed on the spot once his usefulness ran its course.

Erin barely missed Patty as she turned and up-heaved against the wall, struggling to hold herself upright until the episode passed. Gasping, she ground her forehead into the unyielding concrete, pleading with whatever powers-that-be to end this nightmare.

Little did she know this was only the beginning.  

“I take it you know him?” Patty couldn’t help sounding clinical as she searched his pockets for an ID, studiously ignoring the fact the man lacked a face. It had been years since she’d seen a dead body, and it never got any easier.

Erin nodded, cleaning her mouth with the back of her hand. “I represented him. He’s a client of mine who came down here to get away from the Norths.”

 _And you sent him back Topside when he begged you not to _,__  a wicked part of herself goaded, oil-slick in the back of her mind. _Gorin warned you. Now she’s dead. Everyone is dead. How much blood can soak your hands today, Erin?_

“We can’t do shit for him, I’m afraid,” Patty said, standing when she didn’t come across a wallet or ID. “Where do we go from here? Erin?”

The DA didn’t answer, eyes trained on the body. Darkness notwithstanding, she had the distinct look of a woman detaching from earth, the purposeful light that had filled her eyes diminishing the longer she stared.

Patty knew the look and snapped her fingers near Erin’s face, breaking her spiraling concentration.

“Don’t be doing that, baby. We don’t have time for guilt if your girlfriend’s in danger. He’s gone. Focus on the living.”

“This all happened because of me.”

“I ain’t gonna argue that point right now, Erin. I’m pissed at you, yeah, but you didn’t pull the trigger. This was a mob hit. Just so much collateral damage.”

 _Humans aren’t disposable assets_ , Gorin’s voice came again, and Erin had to wrench her eyes away or risk puking. What had she done?

Moving again, she took them through familiar tunnels where pipes ran the length of the walls, Patty always a step ahead with her gun drawn. Finding their way wasn’t difficult－not after how many treks with Goliath－but in the grand scheme of things she had no earthly idea where to start looking other than Holtzmann’s lab.

If they could get there.

“These people have elevators?” Patty asked with a skeptically raise of her eyebrow. The lift looked little more than a hole in the wall with a steel cage inside not unlike a birdcage. Unsurprisingly, it screamed death trap.

“The Underground has levels. The Main Hall is about three floors below us. I usually take a lift down.” It never occurred to Erin to check and see if the thing was still operational before stepping in. After all, it was a lift crashing that had taken her Topside.

“Man, I’m gonna die in some pit under the earth, and no one’s gonna know where the hell to start looking. They gonna say ‘what the fuck happened to Patty?’ and my ghost will be screaming ‘some dumbass DA got me killed in the sewers!’.” Patty muttered, stepping into the lift and holding her breath until it settled. She’d never admit it aloud but tight spaces did nothing for her nerves.

Erin didn’t say a thing on the way down, leaning against the inner wall with her eyes closed, sagging like the weight of the world was settling over her shoulders. When they finally landed on the right floor which was－shocking enough－soldier free, the two edged down the final corridor and waded into a sea of utter and unfathomable destruction the likes of which stopped their hearts.

“Oh my sweet holy fuck,” Patty sucked in stepping into the Main Hall, gun swinging useless at her side.

She’d seen bodies over the years. Been privy to some of the more gruesome murders in New York’s sordid criminal past. Seen heinous acts that put horror movies to shame, but this? This was completely next level.

Black smoke curled along the ceiling like creeping fingers, acrid and oily, drenched with the putrid scent of burning plastic, wood, refuse and flesh. At the far end of the Main Hall burned an angry red-orange beacon of bodies heaped atop the only worldly possessions they’d owned. Soaked in accelerant, black limbs reached from the flames towards the blackened ceiling like grisly thorns, hands turned to claws. The smell was otherworldly and gag-inducing.

“They didn’t have to burn them,” Erin whispered, the glow of the flames turning her tears a molten orange. If she lost anymore color she’d become transparent.  

At a loss for words－human savagery never ceased to shock and repulse her－Patty forewent her ‘made of stone’ persona and gently took Erin by the arm, turning her away until they were facing each other.

“I need you with me in the here and now, baby-girl. Where would your girl be? Which way?”

“There were children…down here, Patty,” Erin hiccuped, unable to break her stare. “They’re burning children.”

“And we’ll get them.” Patty swung around in front of her, blocking the site. “You hear me? We’ll crucify them, but not right now. We can’t do anything for the dead. Help me help you by finding Holtzmann, okay? Where would she hide?”

Hearing the name sparked something in Erin, chasing away the hazy cobwebs of disbelief and shocked anguish. Nodding tearfully, she took Patty around a side corridor, the halls becoming familiar once more despite the blood stains and bullet holes peppering the cement every so many feet.

Jillian and Gorin’s home was a devastated mess when they arrived, the residence ransacked and razed to the ground. Patty had no trouble guessing what the Norths were looking for if Gorin was tied to them, but Erin didn’t seem surprised, making a beeline for a hallway that bore scars of bullet holes and a series of frighteningly deep concussion fractures along the walls, ceiling, and floor.

The hatch at the end had been blasted off its hinges from what appeared the inside out, blowing debris as far back as fifty or more yards. Though the heat of the explosion had cooled greatly, the room was still cloyingly hot and smelled heavily of electrical fires and short-circuiting components.

Erin stumbled past the uneven threshold and stared in mute horror at the destruction of Jillian’s hydroelectric machine. The gargantuan metal trunk--the one she’d helped her girlfriend tinker with on more than one occasion-- was nothing more than a blasted stump, melted, shredded, or completely obliterated in the explosion. Tangled metal debris lay everywhere, ensuring the floor was a maze of a thousand cuts.

Worse still, Jillian was nowhere to be found.

“This was where she and I last were,” Erin almost pleaded, searching the room in a panic. Where had she gone? Where were the Norths?

Little by little, it looked as though the worst had happened.

There were no bodies but a fair amount of blood painted the floor. Some equipment that looked vaguely military lingered under the debris. She spotted a smashed helmet across the room.

The Norths had been here, but where was Jillian?

“The hatch!” Erin gasped, hurriedly picking her way to the security hatch she and Jillian had climbed through in their haste to flee the Norths. Following Erin’s lead, Patty helped heave aside a fallen bookcase, revealing a hole into the lower tunnels which Erin climbed into with little thought or ceremony.

Curing continuously and vigorously, Patty followed almost tackling Erin when she started to jog down the tube towards a destination unknown. Instinct drove her more than common sense, taking her around corners and down passages seemingly at random.

Jillian was here. She had to be here. It was the only possible answer Erin could stomach, the alternative threatening to drive her into madness.

She couldn’t have lost her.

Not her.

Not when she’d just gotten her back.

“Where are we going?” Patty panted, well and truly turned around at this point. The Underground was a maze. No, scratch that. This place was labyrinthian. Hell, she wouldn’t have been shocked to run across a Minotaur at this point.

Erin didn’t answer because that antechamber looked exactly like the one she’d lost Abby in, complete with a rusted and bent pipe. Hadn’t she come this way with Abby? Was Abby part of the pyre in the Main Hall, burning with the rest of the bodies?

She couldn’t entertain that thought.

Not when she sensed she was getting closer to the chamber where Jillian lost her mother. Or was that farther back? Maybe she’d taken a wrong turn?

Shooting past another antechamber, Erin skittered to a stop, catching movement out of the corner of her eye. Patty was a few steps behind her about to cross a t-joint in the pipe when the stone suddenly exploded directly in front of Patty, the bullets meant for her head just barely missing their mark. Twisting back around the corner, gun out and safety off, Patty felt herself descend into a familiar but unwanted sense of heightened calm. Hearing became her sharpest tool, pinpointing where the shooter was by the sound of their shifting. Her retaliation was swift and effective.

Duck low.

Raise the barrel.

Aim for the torso not the small points like the head.

Squeeze the trigger and－

“Don’t shoot!” Erin ripped around the opposite corner Patty was rolling out from, hands raised well above her head. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

“What in the sweet fucking Christ do you think you’re－”

“Patty, I know her! Abby, it’s me! It’s Erin!”

How this was possible didn’t even register. Erin closed the distance between the two, rushing to grab the sagging woman barely holding herself up against the wall.

“Erin?” Abby husked, blind eyes wide with shock. The arm holding a black Glock dropped to swing by her side while the other remained wrapped around her bloody middle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, at least we know someone survived....<_<


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry to everyone who's been waiting on an update. Life had taken a drastic but good (for the moment) turn. I finally landed a decent job but the hours are long and I'm dog-ass tired when I get home most nights. I've just not had the time or energy to fully devote to my work, and for that I'm sorry. Hopefully, in the next few weeks, things will settle down, and I'll go back to a regular schedule. Until then, enjoy our final look at the girls for the moment. We're going into the belly of the beast next....

“Oh my god, you’re alive. How are you alive? I thought－ _shit_!” Wedging herself under Abby’s right arm served to keep her from falling when her legs buckled, but Erin wasn’t in a steady enough position to support the heavier woman, sagging under the sudden weight.

“Whoa, easy.” Patty rushed in, catching Abby by the opposite arm before she dragged both herself and Erin to the floor. Helping the woman who just shot at her went against every instinct drilled into her head, but there would be time for questions later. “We got you. Just don’t shoot at me anymore, okay?”

“Don’t make yourself a target, and I won’t.” Abby barely had the strength to make it to her knees, quivering in the semi-dark as relief replaced adrenaline. For a hot second, she believed she was done for...again.

“How did you get away from the soldiers?” Erin asked, shrugging out of her shirt and pressing the fabric against one of the worst looking bullet wounds on Abby’s scarlet red torso. The blind woman bared her teeth in a bloody grimace, arching away from Erin with a stifled cry.

“Goliath,” came the gritted response once she’d mustered the ability to speak again. Her hands fumbled the compress Erin was trying to apply, adding pressure. She knew how bad this was. “I don’t know how he found me, but he did. Mowed through the soldiers like they were rice paper. I’ve never seen…” Abby hissed, slapping her free hand against the floor and squeezing her eyes shut when another wave of pain struck. “ _ _Fuck, this hurts__.”

“I know. I’m so sorry.” Erin dipped her head, brown hair obscuring her face. She was trying to compartmentalize it all. The Underground sacking. Abby alive. Gorin dead. Jillian gone. It was all so much at once. “I left you. Back in the antechamber, I left when I should have－”

“Stop with the survivor’s guilt, okay? It’s just a few new holes. I’ll whistle when I walk around now.” It wasn’t hard to tell her jesting was a direct response to fear and pain. In the few seconds Abby had been talking she’d lost her remaining color, sweat dampening her brow.

“Erin,” Patty put and hand on her friend’s shoulder, momentarily pulling her away. Leaning in, she whispered, “She’s in a bad way. We need to get her to a hospital before she bleeds out.”

“There’s a medical bay down here. Taft runs it.”

“Baby, no. Listen to me. We can’t stay down here. She’s going to die if we don’t get her help.”

“We can’t take her Topside.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“Do you want to carry her all the way up?” Erin challenged, lowering her voice even further like she and Patty were arguing parents rather than very scared, very out of their depth adults. “Abby would never make the trip, and you know it. We can’t risk moving her.”

“And keeping her down here is a sure fire way to－”

“You know I can hear you both, right?” Abby husked a laugh, watching the two from her slumped position against the wall. “Your friend’s right, Erin. Turns out, the movies lied. Bullets to the stomach are…pretty bad, and you know from experience how under-equipped we are down here.”

“Ain’t even got cable?” Patty chuckled, attempting to lighten the mood.

“We’ve got VHS and shadow puppets. That’s about it,” Abby said with a pained smile.

“Stone age. I dig it.”

Erin, however, wasn't interested in joking. “Abby, I really don’t think--”

“The Norths are gone, aren’t they?” Abby cut in, turning solemn once more. The question was so out of left field it took Erin a good three seconds to shift gears. “You didn’t encounter anyone on your way down here.”

“No,” the D.A. shook her head, unsure where Abby was going with this.

“Because they found what they were looking for.”

“I don’t understand.”

Abby grew silent despite being the one to broach the questions, wrestling with an impossible truth too awful to fully digest. If the Norths were truly gone, if Erin was here instead of Rebecca...without Jillian, then the worst had happened.

“Maybe this is a conversation better had elsewhere?” Patty suggested, but Abby waved her off, rising to face the music, so to speak.

“No. She needs to know. Rebecca ran from the Norths thirty three years ago.”

“I’m aware,” Erin said slowly.

“Thirty-three years, Erin. How old is Jillian?”

She opened her mouth with a ready-made answer but promptly closed it. Truth be told, Erin had never really seen the point in asking, figuring they were around the same age.

Abby signed, stifling a sharp stab of pain at the movement. This wasn’t the time to do this, but she was between a rock and a hard place. “Thirty-three years ago, Rebecca ran from the North stronghold under a hail of bullets with a newborn in her arms.”

Erin felt her pulse quicken, ice slowly replacing the blood in her veins, spreading the cold to her extremities. Beside her, Patty stilled, listening intently.

“A very special, very unique child, but there was an incident with a soldier. He grabbed the baby and it fell. There’s a reason Jillian has aphasia, and it wasn’t because her mother abandoned her in an alley as an infant.”

Erin stared from her place on her knees, petrified from the inside out. All this time. All these lies. How had she not seen it? It was her profession to spot the liar, but then again, Jillian looked nothing like her mother and Erin had no reason to doubt Rebecca's story, so how…

“An experiment,” Abby filled in, sensing Erin's question before it was spoken into fruition.

“I fucking knew it,” Patty leaned back, just as engrossed in the story.

“Rebecca was looking for a cure. She…found it, and the Norths wanted it. Wanted to turn Jillian into their own personal tester rat, and now they’ve taken back what Rebecca and I stole all those years ago. That’s why you need to take me Topside. I have to find my niece.”

“You lied to Jillian all these years?" Odd how this outrage was the first thing Erin clung to other than the obvious dread Jillian had been kidnapped. "You made her believe her biological mother abandoned her?”

“How would you like to learn the only reason for your existence was so you could be an experiment?” There was logic to Abby’s statement but also so many things wrong, moral and otherwise. Abby could see the explosion building on Erin’s tongue and moved to forestall it for the time being. “I swear I’ll answer your questions when I’m not trying to keep the blood in my body.”   

“We can’t risk moving you Topside,” Erin said woodenly, bringing the topic back around to its original cues. “I’m not even a doctor, and I know that.”

“I __am__ a doctor…sort of, and I concur, but we don’t have a choice.”

“She’s talking sense, Erin, and I’m gonna listen to her. Girl needs a doctor.”

“You got one in a private practice? Because you can damn well bet the Norths still have eyes and ears on this place. If a blind Jane Doe comes in with multiple gunshots they’re gonna know it’s me, and I’d very much like to live to see their whole fucking empire burn before I take my last breath on this earth.”

Patty had to admit, she was impressed. “I’ll get you someone. Swear on it.”

“Holding you to that,” Abby snarled through gritted teeth as she was helped to her feet, legs like jelly and torso on fire. It was nearly impossible to stand upright, her body allowing her a heavy hunch and nothing more. The trek Topside was going to be agony but she’d do it a thousand times if it meant getting Jillian back.

Slowly but surely, the trio made their way into the upper tunnels, thankfully finding a working lift along the way to speed the process. Abby soldiered on－the bloody stain soaking her front extending down her pants legs－but no matter how weak or unsteady she was, she kept moving with ironclad tenacity, determination the only fuel her body actively burned.

But try as she might, there was no fighting the severity of her wounds. Sooner rather than later, she would succumb to them. They all knew it, and that moment steadily encroached with each step, Abby powering down like a clockwork toy reaching the end of her winding.

“Stay with me, okay?” Patty grunted, feeling Abby’s grip on her shoulder begin to slacken as her consciousness flagged. If she could get her talking she could stave off a full collapse…or at least attempt to. “I know it’s hard, and I know you hurt. Believe me, I could hardly breathe when I took a bullet to the hip. Ain’t pain like it.”

“Try…four bullets.”

“Fucking got me there, baby-girl. So while I’ve got your attention, you’re Abigale Lee Yates, right?” Patty said, trying to elicit a response. Fear. Anger. Pain…they all could keep you alive if the sensation was powerful enough. “You graduated high school two years early on account you’re some type of mad scientist genius or something.”

“They got a file on me?”

“Nah, I’m just good at my job. Plus, I never forget a face,” Patty cockily grinned down at Abby. “You look a lot different without your shades.”

“Damn…lost some credit then,” Abby chuckled, faltering when her feet tangled. It was getting harder to move around the pain. “Biological…engineering. That’s what I used to do. How Rebecca and I came to know one another. She was…my mentor.”

Erin cut her a look, one Abby didn’t see but could feel like tiny needles pricking the side of her face. Biological engineering…there was a reason Holtz looked the way she did, and why she was so valuable to the Norths.

“No shit? Fuck. Biological engineering. Way beyond my pay grade. I liked History in school. Would have liked to have been a professor, but I’ve got too much cop blood in me.”

Abby nodded along but she was drooping, the color of her skin taking on the pallor of watered down gray paint. What was worse, Erin was sagging too, her stamina not nearly as robust as Patty’s. All too quickly, this became a one-woman towing operation.

Rounding a familiar corner, Erin pulled the procession to a premature halt, realizing with a twist of dread they were about to walk through the Main Hall. As far as she knew, Abby was unaware of the devastation done to her home. Seeing it now in all its gruesome glory? Seeing the mound of burning bodies? It would destroy her.

“We can’t go this way.”

Patty’s head shot up, eyebrow quirking over the top of Abby, skepticism plain. Erin licked her lips, readying a lie that never came. Abby didn’t appear to have heard. In fact, she didn’t even respond to them stopping, hanging limply from Patty’s arm like a marionette with its string cut.

“Shit,” Patty hissed, letting the unconscious woman gently slip to the floor and crouching over her. Immediately, her fingers went to Abby’s throat, searching.

“Is she－”

Patty held up a hand for silence, listening with her whole body. One second. Two. Three. Finally, she rocked back with an exhale. “No,” she said, prompting Erin to exhale and catch herself against the wall before sliding to the floor. “But she’s not got much left in her. How much further?”

“There’s a lift on the other side of the Main Hall. It’s the one we took down here. We just need－”

Both women froze, the hairs on the backs of their necks standing straight up. A cry warbled through the semi-dark like a banshee’s wail, its origins unknown but it’s eerieness elongating the shadows, tinting the Underground in otherworldly shades.

No, it wasn’t crying. Erin recognized the sound for what it was because hours ago cries like that had torn from her own throat as she beat wildly at the lift cage bearing her away from Jillian. This was the anguished wail of utter heartbreak. Of tortured grief at its purest, the kind of sadness that reduced a human to a noise-making creature alone, speech a far-flung luxury.

“What the fuck?” Patty breathed, face ashen. Things that made noises like that belonged in horror movies, and she wasn’t about to be the first dead on account of her skin color, no way.

“We need to keep moving.” Motioning for Patty to grab Abby’s right arm, Erin took the left despite her fatigue and moved them towards the Main Hall and the heart-wrenching sight that awaited them.

In the gruesome glow of the hungry flames, a hard silhouette sat in the center of the Hall, his sizing diminished in the enormous room but his presence no less unnerving. Hunched in half at the waist, an unmasked Goliath cradled a familiar figure in his arms as tenderly as a mother would a child, massive shoulders shaking as he sobbed. In death, Gorin's features were skeletal, the stretch of her illness and the havoc it wreked on her body clearly visible in the stillness of death. Head thrown back, Goliath loosed a scream towards the blackened ceiling, mouth a voided pit, tears cutting rivers down his cheeks. The volume of his voice was alien, carrying a dual echo as if more than one being cried at once, raising goosebumps down on the back of Patty and Erin’s arms.

But what scared Erin the most and quickened her pace－dragging a thoroughly terrorized Patty along－weren’t the bullet holes littering his body or the absence of blood flowing from them, it was his missing mask. In another life, she might have found him handsome, but in the light of the pyre, with his face twisted in agony, Goliath appeared more creature than man. The green of his eyes－glimpsed momentarily－glowed like torches in his skull, visible at a distance.

“What the fuck?” Patty breathed several times, making sure not to make eye contact or even lifting her gaze until they were inside the lift and on their way Topside.

“Goliath,” Erin replied by way of explanation, shaking.

“You all have fucking monsters down here, for real.”

Erin wasn’t so sure. Monsters didn’t wail like that, didn’t mourn to the degree they shook the stones with their cries. Monsters were the men who dragged more than a dozen bodies they’d slaughtered with automatic gunfire into a pyre and left it to burn. Monsters razed a peaceful settlement to the ground on a hunting raid.

Monsters were the men in black who took everything from Erin.

The night was just as cold as when they’d entered the Underground, prompting Patty to shrug out of her coat when they finally reached the mouth of the main entrance tunnel and wrap it around Erin and Abby, both ill-prepared for the winter bite. Jogging a short distance away, the P.I. dug something from her pants pocket and turned away, dialing a number on her cell phone.

“Monique?” she asked a few moments later when the other line picked up, breath fogging around her.

“What the hell you calling me for while I'm working?” the woman on the other line hissed. Patty could make out the background noise pollution of a hospital.

“You know if I call it’s an emergency.”

“Everything with you is one.”

“I need you to come to Central Park," Patty said with a hand on her hip, slowing turning to orient herself. "West entrance. Bring your kit. I’ve got a gunshot victim.”

“Bitch, you think I’m going to be able to just walk on out--”

“I’ll pay you double your salary for the night and talk with your boss. Gonna need you for a hot minute. This is serious.”

“Then bring them in,” Monique said in a distracted voice, muttering something to someone.

“Can’t. Mob related. There’s a hit out.”

“And you want me involved?” she said aghast. Patty could almost picture her putting a hand against her chest in shock.

Sighing, Patty pinched her nose. Sometimes it was hard remembering this woman used to be married to her brother. Harder still she wound up liking her after everything. Mooky was an idiot, after all. Monique was just...wound tight. “Mo, just do it. You owe me anyway, and tonight I’m collecting. You’ll see me waiting.”

Monique blew out a shallow curse. “Gonna take me thirty minutes just to get out of here.”

“You get here in fifteen and I’ll triple your pay. Like I said, it's an emergency.”

A beat of silence.

“I’ll bring the van.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Oh this can't be good <_<


End file.
